


Godless Absolution

by sobrecogimiento



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-24
Updated: 2011-04-24
Packaged: 2017-10-18 14:19:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/189763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sobrecogimiento/pseuds/sobrecogimiento
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel's experience of the end of the world, possibly also how he gets laid without knowing he wants to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Godless Absolution

**Author's Note:**

> This was written before S5, so both Anna and Lucifer both diverge pretty far from how they turned out in canon.

As it turns out, Castiel’s beginning to think that the last thing he’ll ever do is lie.

It shouldn’t bother him to the extent it does, not after he’s already rebelled far past the point of no return and is now staring down eternity in the form of the archangels in their true form, doing their damnedest to end his existence, experiencing sheer terror for the first time as it runs through his veins. Fear, fear of the unknown, and at what he thinks is the end of his life Castiel has never felt more human. He told Dean he’d hold them off, and he’s trying, with everything he has he’s trying, but it’s not going to be enough, and he’s so scared that they’ll shred right through him like sodden newspaper and stop the one thing that can prevent Sam Winchester from unleashing the apocalypse. On top of his fear for the end of his own existence, it’s almost too much to handle, and when he sees all the archangels coming for him at once, all of heaven’s fury collected and channeled into one blow, Castiel braces himself for it, and he’s waiting for the end, hopes the Prophet is surviving this because the poor man has had more than his share of heaven already, thinks one final apology to Dean—

And the light hovers around him and stops.

After the space of a few breaths, Castiel dares to open his eyes, and realizes he was pulled away from the brink of death, because where he is now is vaguely reminiscent of heaven, nothing like the sort of afterlife he would have expected to discover, too pleasant for deserters. The light around him is as bright as any angel’s, but is hovering and descending softly in turns, like luminescent snowflakes. It’s a trick he thinks he’s seen before, but not in eons, and he stands there, feeling his vessel’s heart beat erratically and trying to catch the fleeting memory.

It lasts until a voice behind him says, “Gotcha.”

Castiel spins around so fast he feels certain parts of his borrowed body creak in protest, but it is something easily ignored, especially upon discovering the owner of that voice.

“Lucifer,” he breathes, so softly it’s barely a word, and is immediately crushed under awe and terror and sorrow. Sorrow, because he did not speak soon enough, because he followed orders for too long, because Dean failed to stop his brother.

The Devil smiles, blindingly bright, because he is in his true form, and like this Castiel can see where he is still broken, wounds long since scars from his fall. Thoughtlessly, he reaches out to touch, to cover those old imprints he can never hope to heal, and then remembers what this angel has become, snatches his hand back.

The action makes Lucifer laugh. “What have you to fear, Castiel?” he asks. “You already rebelled against heaven. Nothing is left for you. No one will help you. What more have you to fear from me?”

At the words, something inside him clenches and compresses, but he lifts his borrowed head, as if he is still proud, and says, “I know what you are, and I remember what you were.”

“And so you think it is wise to fear?” Lucifer asks. He draws closer, and Castiel knows his vessel has got to be suffering from the proximity, but he can’t make himself back away. The Devil lowers his voice to something almost intimate. “I remember you as well,” he whispers. “I remember how you tried to stop me. Tell me, Castiel. Why did you do that?”

“Because it was wrong to rebel against the will of God,” Castiel says. It is the right answer, the simple answer, the easy answer.

But it is also dishonest, and therefore Lucifer can see it is wrong.

His eyes narrow, and his blackened, burned wings flap behind him once, in disapproval. “No,” he says. “That’s not why.”

And then the light disappears.

*  
It’s Anna who finds him, in an all-but useless body on the Earth’s battered surface, Anna who heals him and takes him to safe refuge. Neither heaven nor hell care enough about those who aren’t in their direct path to go seeking them out actively, time enough for that when one or another wins.

“How’d you get away?” he asks her, when after an untold amount of time he rediscovers rational thought.

She cracks a smile on the face of the body she got as favour and replies, “By being awesome.”

For the most part, the waiting is characterized only by boredom, that and impatience, human emotions Castiel would have been perfectly comfortable without. It takes him longer than he would have liked to admit to realize that heaven’s losing.

“Why?” he asks Anna, who is sitting by the window, braiding and unbraiding her red hair until it curls in wisps and tendrils about her face. “They started it, they wanted this. How come they’re still losing?”

“Because dear old Zach was counting on the Winchesters to help him,” she tells him, voice thick with old, bitter anger. “It was a done deal after Sam pledged himself to Lucifer in return for Dean.”

Castiel’s shock ripples through the house in waves, making the windows buckle outwards, nearly to the breaking point, and then shrink back in. “Why—?” he beings.

“Why didn’t I tell you?” Anna interrupts. “Because I was hoping in time you could learn to get over it. I knew if I’d told you when I found you, you’d have gone racing off into hell on a suicide mission. It’s too late Cas,” she tells him softly. “Way too late. They sealed the deal immediately after he broke out of hell.”

“Damn you,” he says, but the words are cheap and false and hollow. “Damn you!” he repeats, but louder the words are only worse.

“Castiel,” Anna tries, rising from her chair. He can see the light behind her, but he can also see her eyes, full of care for him, full of love, and it was something he never understood. “I didn’t want you to hurt yourself anymore,” she says, so close now, almost touching. “I just, I just wanted you to understand, can you please understand what it means?”

He isn’t nodding, can’t do anything, can’t fucking  _move,_  and Anna is right there, breathing him in. Kisses him, and he thinks the astral plane they’ve hidden in will buckle under force of impact, but it remains stable, and he kisses her back, for the first time  _wants._ And then he lets her go, because in that moment he suddenly understood.

For the first time, he knows the truth.

“I know,” he says, hoarsely, as if he’s been screaming for hours on end. “But it’s not you, Anna. It could have been, and I wish it were, and I hope it could be, someday. But now it isn’t you.”

He leaves her, and she calls after him, sting of rejection buried underneath genuine concern for him. “You don’t come back, and I’ll follow you!” she yells. “You’ll damn us both!”

“Damned?” he asks. “By what God?”

But there is no answer for that, and in the end they part in silence. He searches for the gate to hell alone, praying that this will not be the death of him, wondering in turns why he still cares. 

He prays, and tries not to feel as if his words disappear into the void.

*  
In hell, Satan is still organizing his regime.

When Castiel finds him, he looks like nothing so much as a factory owner, lecturing his managers on the proper setup. He has turned hell into an enormous construction site, and the angel cannot approach him in the midst of his followers, in the middle of his affairs. He waits until he is alone, a supposedly brief interlude he takes advantage of on impulse, fearfully.

“Castiel,” Satan greets him comfortably, as if he is accustomed to angels visiting him. He seems more in his element now, better adjusted than he ever was in heaven. “Excuse the mess,” he continues cordially. “My followers and the lesser demons managed to upturn the system I had entirely while I was locked up. It’s going to take the greater part of an eternity to fix.”

The unexpected nature of it gives him pause, causes him to momentarily forget why he came, but then Castiel recovers and stops in front of the Devil, facing him, determined to find the truth. “You have the Winchesters,” he accuses. “You’ve had them from the beginning.”

“Well, I never tried to hide it,” Lucifer responded irritably. He steps around Castiel and continues walking down the narrow hallway. “If you didn’t know until now, it’s through no fault of mine, and, even so, there was nothing you could have done to stop it.”

It’s true, and he knows it, but that doesn’t stop him from pursuing the Devil, demanding, “What have you done to them, Lucifer? Dean was supposed to be God’s warrior, not yours. Where is God? They say you’re the last to have seen him.”

Lucifer stiffens then, and rounds on him so suddenly Castiel backs up a step. “God is dead,” he says flatly, monotone at odds with his threatening, overbearing posture. “The last time I saw him, I killed him. He’s been dead for eons, Cas. You wanted the truth? That’s it.”

The confession rings in the air, suspended, Castiel stuck with it because he knows this is true. As an afterthought, the Devil turns, regards him. “If you still give a damn about the brothers, you can see them for yourself.”

And, as much as he hates it, the angel hurries after.

*  
Sam is lounging in an ostentatious, black throne, sorting something out on a touch screen with such intense concentration that he doesn’t hear them enter the room.

“I’m back,” Lucifer announces, catching his attention. “Out of the chair.”

Without looking up, Sam complies, and reports, “I think I’ve figured out a way to replace the supports under the third level without bringing it crashing down on the fourth. See, what you do is—”

“Sam,” the Devil interrupts, and his head jerks up suddenly.

“Cas!” Sam says, boyish smile breaking over his face, and fuck, that hurts, because he hasn’t changed a day. “How--? But it doesn't matter. I wanted you to join us. I never thought you would. I thought by now they must have—” He breaks off, grins sheepishly. “But they haven’t.”

“What’s been done to you, Sam?” Castiel asks woodenly, and watches the Boy King’s smile fade.

“A better question would be what I’ve done,” Sam moves abruptly, sets his touch screen on a stone table with hideously curved legs. He walks towards a tapestry on the wall, which rises as he approaches it, revealing a window. Dull, orange light, the light of hellfire, pours in, and his features become awash with sunset colours. “You don’t want to know, Cas,” Sam tells him shortly. “I’ve found shortcuts, ways to extract information, break souls . . . I develop methods. Try them out myself, and then teach them to others. Holding out for thirty years, like Dean did, isn’t possible anymore. Not since I’ve been here.”

Castiel nods. It isn’t any better than he expected, isn’t any worse. “Are you happy?” he asks.

Sam faces him abruptly, half his face in light, half in shadow. “I picked the right side, Cas,” he says. “I know it doesn’t look much like it anymore, but this is the real world, and I chose life over death. Dean’s life, more than mine. He’s here, and he’s fine, and that’s more than I ever had assurance of for a good part of our lives topside. Hell, he’s even getting used to it.” Sam’s expression is a grimace, somewhere between pained and amused. “He used to go on about the moral stipulations, like he gave a damn when it got him off the rack. But he’s working on infrastructure now, and ignoring everything else well enough. If he’s fine with that, then yes, I am happy.”

There’s a silence in the room when he finishes, dense and unpleasant, and Castiel wonders what strange world he’s landed in, a world without a God, the one constant that he had always depended on, a world where becoming the right hand of the Devil was the only logical option, perhaps even an honourable one.

“Stay here, Cas,” Sam offers, after a minute. “The Earth’s rubble and heaven’s plastic. It’s fake, and you know it. You can have a place here.”

It’s not as if that wasn’t why he came in the first place, but what gives Castiel pause is that Sam says it because he cares, honestly wants him to have a home again. After centuries in hell, Sam is still fundamentally human, despite everything he’s seen, everything he’s done, and that, that he absolutely cannot fathom.

He’s stammering something, able to neither accept nor reject, and then he’s backing out the door, into the narrow corridor that led him here, and they’re letting him go.

“He’ll come around,” Lucifer says reassuringly, and that’s the last thing Castiel hears before he flees, and bursts out of the hallway only to collide with Dean.

*  
“Cas,” Dean says, mirroring his surprise, and then a smile breaks across his face, a replica of his brother’s. “Man, it’s good to see you alive.”

Proof of Sam’s words is yet another of a series of shocks. Dean looks nothing like a prisoner, a kept pet. He is well-fed, well-dressed, clean, and from his demeanor content, something Castiel could not have believed if he hadn’t seen.

“Dean," he greets, incapable of anything more for a moment, and then recovers. "I've already spoken with your brother. Is it true that you're well?"

“All things considered?” Dean shrugs, and that’s enough of an answer right there. “I didn’t like it,” he confessed. “Still don’t. The things I see here, the things I know Sam’s doing, it. It makes me sick sometimes. And then, when I realize I’m getting used to it, that makes it worse, except for sometimes I just don’t care.” He shakes his head, stuffs his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “I’m with Sam, though. So I’m as good as I’ll ever be.”

“I . . . am pleased that is enough,” Castiel says, still lost in this dystopia and struck by the weight of Dean’s loyalty.

Dean laughs humourlessly. “Yeah. The bitch of it is, I could have said no. I could have let Lucifer kill me. But Sam . . . Sammy didn’t want me to. So I couldn’t. I became his instead.”

“You belong to—” Castiel begins, icing over with cold dread.

“Sam,” Dean tells him hastily. “Not the Devil. I’m Sam’s. And that, well. It means everything you think it does.”

And then Castiel sees it, if he looks hard enough, the signature etched into and across Dean, hardly necessary for a willing slave. He thinks about it, considers the various definitions of ownership, and suddenly knows what it means.

He knows what it means even before Sam swings around the corner and kisses his brother full on the mouth, light and casual like they’ve done this for years, and the angel knows they have. They’ve done this for centuries.

“I asked Cas to stay,” Sam announces, and Dean’s face lights up.

“Are you going to?” he asks, the same conversation all over again. “C’mon, you have to stay.”

“It’s not,” Castiel says, and then finishes in a rush, “You’re not who I tell."

And with that, he returns to seek the Devil.

*  
Lucifer is in the room where Castiel left him, now sitting on his throne, touch screen in his hand.

“Amazing work, that boy does,” he murmurs when Castiel comes in. “Both of them, actually. I mean, Sam was always destined for this, but the two-for-one deal? I haven’t been this pleasantly surprised since Eve bit the damned apple.”

"God is dead?" Castiel asks, the words foreign and harsh in his mouth, an impossibility

"That's very old news, my friend," Lucifer confirms, still concentrating on the touch screen. "I don't know where you've been that you haven't heard it. Honestly, do you think he would have let the corruption in your precious heaven continue, if he was? No, Castiel. I am unmistakably guilty of patricide."

There is only one response to that, and he finds he cannot pledge himself to a nonexistent cause. “I’ll stay,” the angel tells him. No explanation, none needed, and he stands there, awaiting judgment.

The Devil lifts his head and regards him soberly, his light escalating to the blinding level at which Castiel last experienced it, centuries and millennia ago. “Just tell me one thing,” he says, so quiet it’s almost inaudible, and he’s drawing closer, somehow, without moving at all. “Why did you try to stop me?”

He’s close enough to touch, close enough that the old wounds are clearly visible, and this time Castiel does touch them, runs his hands over the scars, the midnight wings, ends with his hands on Lucifer’s face, hoping that conveys how much he wants to heal the damage. “Because it’s you,” he says. “I didn’t want you to suffer that, I didn’t want it to happen to you.”

“Yes,” Satan breathes, hand on the back of the angel’s neck, pulling him in. “That’s why.”

He kisses him then, gently, expertly, and the intensity of it makes it feel like bombs going off, lightning and comets hitting the ground all at once, and Castiel never wants to come up for air. He understands, now, because he rebelled he understands, and never before.

It would be enough to have this once, more than he would have ever hoped for, the way the light is growing, warming and enveloping him, such a contrast to the searing and burning punishment the lights of the greater angels gave him when they thought he strayed from their false cause. This is Lucifer, this is the Devil, whom he was instructed for most of his existence to hate, and never could quite manage to. This is beautiful and terrible and impossible, and it’s because Castiel loves him.

He’s thinking about Anna and her twisted loyalty, her love, and that she deserves better than what he can give her, than what they did to her. He’s thinking about Dean, owned by Sam, and so willing to accept that. Castiel understands that now, wanting something to own him, body and soul, because he wants this, he wants this, pushes closer and kisses deeper, and thinks how strange it is, that God is dead and he has now found his absolution.

The light of the morning star fills him and consumes him, and he rises and comes back down with the Devil’s name on his lips.

In the end, it’s the first time his prayer has been answered. 

~End


End file.
